Slow on the Uptake
by Fluky
Summary: Look at this tiny place. To the heart seeking freedom it is a prison surrounded by water. Post KH2. Mild [SoraRiku].


**Author's note: **This is fluffier and more shounen-ai (as opposed to yaoi) than I'd originally intended. Oh well. I'll provide you with a barf bag if you feel the need to puke. I got a little bit caught up with drawing contrasts and highlighting how much Riku didn't fit, and... oh bah, just read it. Reviews would _definitely_ be appreciated, since I haven't written anything that wasn't blatantly 'pairing-oriented' in a while and am frankly rather paranoid about it. This is set _immediately_ after KH2 (though I ignored the part where Mickey sent them a letter), and thus has a few spoilers for the game.

**Disclaimer:** Kingdom Hearts has never belonged to me and likely never will.

* * *

_Sora wiped a tear of happiness from his eye. "We're… we're back," he said._

_Kairi stretched a hand out to him, a soft smile on her face. "You're home," she agreed. Sora grinned and, hand outstretched as if to high-five her, he slapped the good luck charm into Kairi's palm._

Behind him, Riku staggered clumsily up onto the beach, his clothes wet and clinging to him, grit filling his sneakers as his feet sank into the soft sand under the water. Mickey waded alongside him, arms held higher than his shoulders to keep them out of the ocean. Attempting to pull his waterlogged jeans up and above the gentle waves, Riku felt a sharp stab in his unhealed ribs from his fight with Xemnas and winced slightly. Mickey shot a concerned glance at Riku, but the silver-haired boy waved it off with a small smile, placing a hand gingerly over the injured area. Looking up, he saw Kairi waiting for him, Donald and Goofy poking Sora and messing with his hair as the brunet laughed and feebly attempted to fend them off. Kairi beamed at him, much in the same way that she had with Sora, and stretched out a hand; Riku accepted it gratefully, enveloping her small hand in his, and was gently pulled out of the water. Mickey scampered out next to him and ran to Goofy and Donald.

A small, awkward silence followed. "I was beginning to think that I'd never see this place again," Riku said, looking around. He was pleased to see that his spot was still standing and barely changed, the paopu tree still hanging like the branches of a weeping willow over the ocean. "It seems… smaller."

"You and Sora have grown a lot," Kairi admitted.

Riku looked down at the shorter girl. "You don't seem to have grown at _all_," he teased.

"I did too!" Kairi protested, poking him on the chest indignantly. "It's just that you two grew more, that's all."

"Riku!" Sora yelled from behind them. Mickey had originally gone over to attempt to make Goofy and Donald stop torturing the boy, but had then given in to his playful side with an 'oh, what the hell' shrug. He now gleefully joined his knight and mage, the four rolling in a mess of limbs and hands as they tickled Sora mercilessly. "K-Kairi! _Help_!"

Riku and Kairi exchanged a look before chuckling and running to their sand-encrusted companion.

"What do you think, Kairi?" Riku said, smirking. "Should we help him?"

"Hmm… maybe we should let him suffer a bit longer," Kairi giggled.

"_Guuuys_!" Sora howled, tears of laughter rolling down his face as he wheezed for air.

"You know, _you_ look like you could take some tickling too, Riku," Mickey said innocently.

Before Riku could protest, the short king had him on his back, gloved fingers poking into his stomach and sides, forcing out laughter from the taller, silver-haired boy. "N-no, wait, s-s-stop!" Riku gasped. Rolling from side to side on the sand and trying to throw off the king (who was determinedly clinging to him like a limpet), Riku could see Kairi standing nearby, her normally bright smile taking on a small, evil twist, eyes shimmering with mischief. The redhead knelt down next to Riku, stretched her arms around him, and rubbed her fingers where she knew he was the most ticklish.

Riku burst into fresh peals of laughter. "T… traitor," he managed to accuse in between laughs, the excessive movement causing a light sting in his ribs where Xemnas had hit him hard. It was a manageable sting, and so Riku ignored it, up until the point where Kairi unintentionally dug her finger right at the injured spot. Riku jolted upright with a loud, pained yelp, causing a startled Kairi and Mickey to move two steps back.

"Riku… you're hurt?" Mickey asked in concern, all trace of his previously joking mood replaced by a serious expression.

"It's nothing," Riku said in embarrassment, teeth clenched as he waited for the pain to subside.

"We should get you to a doctor," Kairi said.

"You should go home to your parents," Mickey suggested, "I'm sure they miss you. Besides," he added hesitantly, "it's about time that Goofy, Donald and I went home too."

Near Riku, Sora abruptly stopped rolling and laughing. "Do you have to go so soon?" he asked in a small voice.

"No, not _already_," Donald said mournfully.

"Yeah, your Majesty," Goofy pleaded, "Couldn't we stay just a little while longer?"

Mickey smiled sadly. "We've been gone for a long time, fellas. Besides, I'm sure that Daisy misses you," he addressed this to Donald, "and I know that I sure miss Minnie."

"Awwww…" Donald turned to Sora, whose blue eyes shimmered with the threat of tears. The mage gulped, at a loss for words. "Sora…"

Goofy saved Donald from that potentially awkward moment by sweeping the two emotionally into his arms. "Gawrsh, Sora, I'm really gonna miss you," he said, nuzzling his cheek against Sora's spiky hair.

"I'm gonna miss you too, Goofy, Donald," Sora whispered.

"Riku?" The silver-haired teen looked down at the king, who was standing straight-backed with all the formality of someone from royalty. Mickey offered a hand. "Thanks," he said, a small smile breaking through his solemn expression.

Riku took the proffered hand and shook it firmly as Donald burst into loud floods of tears and hugged Sora around the neck so hard that the brunet was almost toppled over. "_Sooooraaaaaa_!" he wailed.

"C'mon, Donald, Goofy," Mickey said sadly. Somewhere behind them, further up on the beach, a gummi ship lowered through the sunny blue sky and came to a rest on the sand. "It's time to go."

Reluctantly, Donald let go of Sora and walked up to his king, next to Goofy, who was sniffing and wiping his nose on a sleeve. Kairi, who had been somewhat of an outsider to the whole affair, pretended not to notice as Sora brushed a gloved hand across his eyes.

"Bye, Sora!" the chipmunks yelled from inside the ship. Through something almost entirely unconscious, Sora, Kairi and Riku moved to stand together, Sora in the middle, with Kairi and Riku placing a hand each on his shoulders and with Sora placing both hands on the small of their backs, as Donald, Goofy and Mickey boarded the ship and the door closed. The three waved as the gummi ship lifted off in a gust of sand and wind, and from the beach Sora could see the trio from the Disney Castle waving back.

"I'll miss them," Sora said, as they turned to head up the familiar path to the mainland. Riku didn't bother responding; there wasn't really much to be said. The three continued in silence until they began reaching the first few houses.

"Your parents really miss you, you know," Kairi said to Sora.

Sora smiled. "It's hard to believe that we haven't seen our parents in so long, huh?"

Riku nodded quietly. He didn't want to mention it, but the island hadn't been the only thing that he'd thought he'd never see again. Sora grinned cheekily, placing both hands behind his head as he strolled. "Y'know," he said, "I kinda miss my mom's baking."

"Only because you used to eat so many of her cookies," Riku said. He sighed, and took on an exaggeratedly nostalgic air. "And you never used to share any of them with us."

"I did so!" Sora retorted.

"Not with me. I had to fight you for them."

Sora turned his grin to Riku. "Well, you always won anyway," he said.

"That's because you were so chubby from eating all the cookies," Riku teased.

"I was not!" Sora cried indignantly.

"Was too. Wasn't that why you started wearing those big pants?"

Sora pouted. "I started wearing big pants because _you_ started wearing big pants."

"I remember those," Kairi said. "I gave them to you for your birthday, remember?"

Riku wrinkled his nose. "Who gives a boy _trousers_ as a birthday present, anyway?"

Kairi was about to open her mouth to protest when the three heard a door opening. A woman only a few centimeters shorter than Sora gaped at them from the front of the house. "_Sora_?"

"Oh yeah," Kairi said apologetically, "I forgot to mention. Your parents moved house."

"Mom?" Sora whispered.

What happened next was a bit of a blur. Sora broke away from Riku and Kairi and pelted toward the house, just about at the same time that the woman ran from her door to the gate, fumbling with trembling hands with the locks, tears breaking free from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. Sora leapt straight _over_ the gate with ease, and, pausing only for a second to stare awestruck at each other, the two made a strange kind of collision together, arms outstretched and clasping at each other, hugging each other so tightly that it was a wonder that either of them could breathe.

"You're back," Sora's mother sobbed, then: "Sora's back!" she shouted in a louder voice.

A man popped his head out from the open door. He spotted the brunet boy. "Sora!" he called out in joy, and ran to his son, embracing him in a tight bear hug that almost enveloped the boy altogether.

"And is that…" Sora's mother squinted. "Riku? Is that you?"

Riku stood where he was in the street, smiling uncertainly. Kairi elbowed him sharply and gave him a small push in her direction. Riku walked awkwardly over to where Sora's mother was pulling the latch on the gate and swinging it open.

"Hello, Mrs.—" Riku didn't get to finish his sentence as he suddenly found himself the recipient of a tight hug, his arms virtually pinned to his sides.

"Oh my goodness, how much you've grown!" the woman laughed. "You _and_ Sora! Come on, come here, go stand against Sora."

Obligingly, Riku moved over to Sora, at the same time that Sora's father moved closer to them. "He's taller than I am now," the man said grudgingly.

"Who, me?" Sora beamed.

Sora's father ruffled his hair fondly. "Not you, you've still got a while to go," he said, and chuckled at Sora's put-out expression.

"You've been keeping yourselves well," Sora's mother observed. "Where have you been? What's been happening? Oh, we missed you both so much! There's so much I want to ask you two! Kairi filled us in on a bit of it when she got back, but you two didn't come back until a little over another year later."

Riku, who had already been feeling a little bit uncomfortable with all the affection he was receiving from the family that wasn't his now felt his emotion slip from discomfort into mild fear. He glanced nervously at Kairi, who, smiling happily at the cheerful image painted by Sora and his parents, had yet to notice his expression. How much exactly had she told them?

"You've been getting stronger, huh?" Sora's father asked proudly, clapping a hand on his son's shoulder.

"He vaulted over the gate just then," Sora's mother said in awe.

Sora blushed and rubbed a hand behind his head. "Aww, that was nothing."

"And you've been getting stronger too, haven't you?" Sora's father turned his attention to Riku. "What've you two been doing for the past year?"

It was only then, when all the attention was turned to Riku, when Kairi noticed the silver-haired teenager's squirming. "I should probably be walking Riku to his home too," she suggested. "He hasn't seen his parents yet."

"Oh goodness! They must be missing you so much! Go, go now," Sora's mother ushered Riku off her lawn with small shooing actions. "Come back and visit soon, alright?"

Riku nodded dumbly, merely glad to be out of what he had considered to be somewhat of a nerve-wracking situation. Kairi and Riku started walking down the street together. Sora, buried in the warm arms of his mother and father, laughing as his hair was ruffled for what seemed like the tenth time that day, didn't even notice as they left.

The street was awkwardly quiet. "So…" Kairi said, in an attempt to break the silence. "What _did_ happen while I was gone?"

"You weren't the one who was 'gone'. It was me and Sora," Riku said evasively, deliberately pasting a smile on his face. Although he had gone a far way in terms of redeeming himself for his initial turn to darkness, thinking about what he'd had to do and how he'd had to live under the cover of Xehanort's Heartless wasn't something that he really wanted to think about. He certainly didn't want to think about those days when Roxas was in the fake Twilight Town. It was necessary in order to bring Sora back, of course, and Riku couldn't honestly say that he hadn't been feeling a slight twinge of vengeance when he had finally defeated Roxas in the form of Xehanort's Heartless, but he couldn't help but feel guilty for having caused Roxas so much pain and confusion as the Nobody discovered that he wasn't a whole person. Riku looked down at his feet, allowing his hair to curtain slightly over his face. "What's been going on here?"

Kairi noticed the teen's avoidance and decided not to press the subject. "Oh, nothing. The same old stuff." She paused. "We started some new stuff in school."

"I've missed a lot," Riku admitted. He groaned slightly at the sudden realization. "I'll be spending weeks trying to catch up."

"Don't worry about it," Kairi said, smiling enthusiastically, "I can help you out. I'm pretty good with what we're doing in class."

"As always," Riku replied fondly, following Kairi as she turned down a path toward a house. Sora's parents weren't the only ones who had moved, and Riku absent-mindedly made a quick note of where his new house was. Unlike Sora's house, Riku's family's gate was unlocked. Kairi walked up to the door and rang the bell.

A short woman, silver hair neat and cropped, answered the door. "Hello?" she said, then relaxed as she saw Kairi. "Oh, Kairi. What's going on?" She opened the door wider. "Would you like to come in?"

"No thank you," Kairi said politely. "I'm just here 'cause I wanted to… well…"

The woman had now directed her attention from Kairi to Riku. She stared at him with an expression that was a mixture of blankness and disbelief. She took in his height, his build, his familiar face, tinged red with mild embarrassment. She took in his clothes, still damp from the ocean, and the lingering smell of sea salt in his long, silver hair. Only two people on the whole island would wear yellow and blue, and she had only seen Tidus the other day. And yet… Riku's mother bit her lower lip. This person couldn't be her son. Her son was a boy—this person was almost a man. Softly, she said: "Are you…?"

Riku twitched under the close inspection. "Don't tell me you've forgotten who I am," he said, covering up his dislike at being looked at like bug under a microscope with a joking tone, "I've only been gone for a short while."

"Years," his mother said softly.

Riku could hear footsteps coming up from behind his mother. "Who's…" his father stopped and gave him a stare identical to the one his mother had just been giving him. "Riku?"

"Hi, dad," Riku said.

The three stared at each other in an uncomfortable silence that seemed to stretch for hours. Kairi shuffled. "Well, I've got to be getting home now," she mumbled quietly and quickly left, the other family barely registering her absence.

Riku bit at his lower lip in a way that was imitative of his mother. "So?" he said, putting on a fake show of cheer, "aren't you going to invite me in?"

"_Riku_," his mother whispered. Before he had time to react, Riku found himself being hugged firmly around his waist, his mother burying her head into his chest. Awkwardly, tentatively, he put a hand on her head and petted her soft hair in a way that he hoped showed fondness. He did love his mother, but he couldn't help thinking… well, how much _smaller_ she was now.

"You're home," his mother sobbed.

"Yeah," Riku echoed emptily. "I'm home."

* * *

It actually didn't take Riku as long as he thought it would to catch up on all of his schoolwork. Granted, going back to school had been a huge change at first—seeing Tidus and Wakka all grown up was a bit of a surprise, although it really shouldn't have been. Selphie seemed to have barely changed, squeaking with pleasure and surprise and glomping him, making him laugh. They teased him for a while on his 'perfect', feminine hair, then teased Selphie for having hair that was worse than a boy's, making her humph and sulk for a while. They hugged Sora and mentioned how little he'd grown in comparison to Riku, standing Sora up next to Tidus and laughing when they noted that Sora was now the shortest male on the island. They laughed at Sora's mostly-unchanged hairstyle, and at how dorky Riku looked when he was out of his casual wear and in his school clothes. 

Sometimes, when the girls went shopping, the males had a 'Boys' Day Out', where they fought and played blitzball, much in the way that they used to when they were children. The fights always started the same way: Wakka would challenge Riku to a match of strength and ability and Tidus would challenge Sora, the two pairs almost evenly matched in terms of build and stature, and it would always end with Riku and Sora, the victors, batting at each other with wooden swords and laughing, and it never really was very clear who did and didn't win. When Riku wasn't playing on the beach or watching television with his friends he was in his or Sora or Kairi's room, sitting at the desk, books strewn everywhere with Sora on the floor and Kairi on the bed, trying to teach them everything that they hadn't learned over the past few years that they had been gone. Kairi, for her part, would sometimes go out with the boys, walking around the island and slipping in little bits of trivia and quizzes in their everyday conversation:

"I still can't believe that barely anything's changed," Sora would say, hands behind his head and in a lackadaisical mood, "even your mini-island looks exactly the same."

"I think the tree grew a bit," Riku would reply, squinting.

"I have a question," Kairi would say. "If the horizontal distance from the island – the base of the tree, that is – to the tip of the tree is forty meters long, and the tree is thirty meters high, what's the distance from the base to the tip of the tree?"

The three would stop for a moment. Sora's face would scrunch itself into a comical expression signifying deep thought, tongue poking out slightly between his lips as he scratched a hand through his hair. Riku would merely gaze at the object in question, brows furrowing slightly, and would always answer just as Sora started counting the fingers on his hands.

"Twenty… ten…" Sora grabbed Kairi's hands. "I don't have enough fingers for this."

"Is it fifty?" Riku would hazard. Kairi would burst into a smile and nod with a small affirmative noise, leaving Sora with a put-out look on his face. Recently, Riku was finding that Sora's expressions would create a small, strange feeling in his heart, but he dismissed it as pride for having gone one-up on Sora again.

"How come you're so good at Math?" the brunet would say.

Riku would merely smirk and making a jibing remark. "Because I'm not slow on the uptake like you," he would say. That would normally end with Sora putting on a mock aggrieved expression and yelping indignantly, with Riku laughing and Kairi giggling, her mouth covered by her right hand.

Many of the trio's outings happened the same way. He didn't want to say anything, but Riku was frankly getting a little bit tired of it.

It wasn't Kairi's giggle that annoyed him. It wasn't Sora's faux indignation, or Kairi's constant testing (Riku rather appreciated this, in fact). It was something elusive but _there_, something that made it harder and harder for him to cover up his aggravation as the days came and went; something that he couldn't quite place his finger on. Over time he couldn't help but ignore Selphie when she ran up to him or Tidus when the blond would amble alongside him, nudging his arm and cracking a joke. It wasn't an action done out of spite; rather, Riku feared that he would snap at the people who claimed to be his friends, hurt them, and make them leave. He found himself spending more and more class time gazing out of the window, mind drifting into nothingness, instead of paying attention to the teacher or to his books.

For the most part, the other teens on the island barely seemed to register his mental absence. Kairi had, at one point, attempted to approach him and ask him if everything was alright; Riku had dismissed her with a laugh, and snapped out of his mindset enough to help her good-naturedly on the cake she was baking, later nibbling on a slice of that cake as he treated her to an ice-cream from the man who passed by their houses at four o'clock daily, playing the same tinkling tune. Sora, too, had seemed to have noticed something wrong with his friend, and was slightly more persistent in asking Riku what the matter was. Sora seemed determined to cling to Riku, dragging him to every blitzball match and every spar, sometimes staying the night at his best friend's house in a sleeping bag on the floor. Riku was similarly as evasive with Sora because, to be honest, he really hadn't the faintest idea what was wrong. It was in fact only after one day at school when he was lying on his back on the sand after having been knocked down so hard by Wakka's blitzball that he was sure that he'd be bruised the next day that Riku suddenly placed the reason for his irritation.

He was bored.

The normalcy was… nice. It was certainly a good change from the years that he had spent in darkness, turning away from his two best friends and fighting, fighting, fighting. He was back with the people who loved him and back with his parents, who he knew loved him despite their awkward inability to express that love. It was just… _too_ nice, _too_ consistent. Waking up, Riku would already know what he would be doing that day without even having to think about it. His body would go through the motions like a programmed robot: Brush his teeth, change his clothes, eat breakfast and say goodbye to his parents. There were days when Riku only realized what it was that his body was doing when he was out of the door and halfway on the way to school.

He hated it. The island – their world – was so, so small, and although Riku was happy to be back, sometimes the silver-haired teen felt as though he couldn't stand it. It was almost exactly the same as the way he had left it, and sometimes he felt that the island was turning him back into the way that he had once been too, erasing the past few years of pain and reverting him back into the child who would sit idly by his paopu tree, staring out over the horizon and thinking that there had to be more than just this. As the days dragged on, he began to feel increasingly more irritated with his prison of sand and water, and trying to conceal that irritation from his friends began to tire him.

Riku was hesitant to say it, so he thought it instead. He was an adrenaline junkie. He loved adventure and exploration, and although the past few years had been anything but ideal, a small part of him had enjoyed traveling to the other worlds and fighting off the Nobodies and the Heartless, feeling the power at his fingertips as he created a Heartless equivalent of Sora (much as the creature had disturbed him) and feeling the exuberant triumph as he and Sora had toppled Organization XIII. Wistfully, he started spending more time on his island, sitting on the broad trunk of the curved tree and staring mindlessly into the distance.

"What're you doing here by yourself?" Kairi asked one day, sidling up to him.

"Nothing," he answered.

"We can see that," Sora snorted from beside the girl. "_Why_ are you by yourself?"

Riku was at a loss for answers, so he merely shrugged. Sora assumed his usual position, leaning against the trunk beside Riku's knees. Kairi looked a little bit hesitant – she didn't visit the small island much – and smiled gratefully as Riku shuffled over a little, giving her space to hop up and sit. The two intruders were silent for a while, merely enjoying the view and the wind that ruffled through their hair, respecting Riku's quiet mood. It was only about ten minutes later when Sora tilted his head up to look the silver-haired teen in the face.

"Riku…" he said concernedly, "is it your ribs?"

The sudden non sequitur almost made Riku fall backward off his perch on the tree. "Huh?"

"The injury you got when we were fighting Xemnas." Sora paused and ran his tongue over the front of his teeth, as if the word was one that was entirely new. Xemnas seemed like something so far away now, a distant memory steamrolled by routine and idyllic cheer. "Does it still hurt?"

Riku blinked. "No," he said, shaking his head slightly, "why do you ask?"

"You've been… cranky for a while," Kairi said in a gentle voice. "We were worried that maybe there was something wrong that you didn't want to tell us about."

Riku turned his gaze back to the horizon. "There's nothing wrong," he stated. "I just… haven't been feeling like myself lately."

Sora regarded him with an alarmed expression. "That means that there's something wrong," he insisted.

Riku sighed. "There really isn't, Sora."

Sora opened his mouth to argue. Kairi noted Riku's mouth set slightly, in a way that was barely noticeable to anyone who didn't spend a lot of time around Riku's mother, and quickly interjected. "We were thinking of going swimming today," she said before Sora could utter a word. "Tidus and the others are already at the pool. Do you want to come and join us?"

"Please?" Sora pleaded. "We haven't seen you around for a while."

Riku tried to appear as if he was giving the proposition some thought. His eyes, vacant and distant, gave him away. "Maybe later," he hedged.

Sora visibly deflated. His head dropped. It was because of his spiky hair that Riku didn't see the sudden mischievous grin that spread over his face. "Okay," Sora said with an expression of absolute solemnity. He walked around the tree, grabbing Kairi's forearm as she jumped off the curled trunk. She shot him a questioning look; he only replied with a grin and mouthed for her to follow what he did. He walked behind Riku then walked on the spot for a short while, his footsteps mimicking those of a person walking away. Riku barely seemed to notice.

That was when Sora (and Kairi, after a second's pause) stepped forward, placing his hands on Riku's back and shoving with all his might. Riku made a noise that sounded a little like a mix between a surprised yelp and a yell of outrage as he was pushed forcefully off the tree, stumbling forward and doing a comical imitation of an out-of-control Ferris wheel before falling backwards right off the island with a loud splash into the ocean. Sora and Kairi burst into laughter and ran to the edge of the island, kneeling and peering over.

"Are you alright, Riku?" Kairi called. Riku surfaced, flailing.

"You _have_ to come swimming now," Sora called gleefully. "You're already wet!"

Riku spluttered and choked out water. He spread his arms out for buoyancy, glanced at Kairi, and then narrowed his eyes at Sora.

Before Sora knew what was happening, two hands were pressed at his rump and he was pushed so that he toppled hands over feet, with a loud yelp not unlike that of a distressed Chihuahua, into the water next to Riku. It was now Riku's turn to burst into laughter as Sora violently broke through the surface of the water, gasping like… well, like a human in water. The brunet rose accusing blue eyes to Kairi, who was giggling helplessly.

"He told me to do it!" she claimed, pointing a finger at Riku. Sora turned to Riku, grinning, grabbing the taller boy by the shoulders and dunking him back underwater. Riku responded by grabbing Sora's ankles and pulling, causing Sora to slip and submerge, bubbles trailing from his mouth as he yelled in indignation.

The two resurfaced with a simultaneous gasp, laughing softly. Sora cocked his head to look at Riku. "There," he smiled satisfactorily.

"What?" Riku chuckled.

"There. Your smile." Sora returned it with a cheerful, cheeky one of his own. "I haven't seen it in a while." He darted his hands out, sticking his ocean-salty thumbs into Riku's mouth and holding the smile, pulling it even wider. "Hey Kairi!" he called to the girl, who was now walking out onto the beach. "Do you think it'll stick if we hold it like this long enough?"

Riku jerked back. "Idiot," he said fondly, grabbing the top of Sora's head and dunking the surprised boy again.

Sora re-emerged with a grin. "Why don't we spend today at the beach?" he suggested, his tone of voice strangely soft. "Just the three of us? It'll take ages to get to the pool if we have to go home and shower and change, and anyway, we're already here…"

Riku sighed at the persistence of his friend. "Okay," he finally said.

"Great! Kairi!" Sora called to the redhead, "we're staying on the beach!" He turned to Riku, grin still on his face. "So, what do you want to do?" he asked. "Swim? Race?" His grin spread. "Ambush Kairi and bury her in the sand?"

Riku actually did have an idea of what to do. It was an idea that had only popped into his head once his flailing body had first hit the cold blue water. "How about… we build a raft?" he suggested.

The grin slowly melted off of Sora's face. "A raft?" he asked dubiously. "Why?"

A familiar tide of irritation crashed over Riku, along with the same peculiar weight in his heart. Riku shoved at Sora's shoulders, maybe a little harder than he had intended, sending the brunet toppling underwater for the fourth time that day. When Sora's head emerged from the surface of the ocean, this time with a hurt expression on his face, Riku had already covered his frustration with a carefully masked grin. "I was just kidding, you goof," he said in a practiced, easy-going voice.

Something passed in Sora's sky-blue eyes, and for a moment Riku feared that Sora knew the truth. That something was, however, gone almost instantly, its appearance so fleeting that it was like a spark of fire that flashed once before being doused in a puddle of rainwater. Sora chuckled, low, easy chuckles that seemed to come like second nature to the shorter boy. "I know that," he said, then set off into a run. "Race you to Kairi!" he shouted over his shoulder. Smiling mildly, Riku followed right after.

That night, Riku snuck back to the island to look for ropes and wood.

* * *

Riku's raft was one that was shoddily constructed due to carelessness and haste. The teen had started out with merely wandering around the island at night, looking for necessary building material. This had stopped however when he had accidentally run into a startled Kairi one night, sitting on the beach by the edge of the ocean, letting the water lap gently at her toes. He had quickly deflected questions about what he had been doing and turned the conversation toward her, leaning over the redhead's shoulder where she had a small sketchbook propped up on her knees. 

"I've been drawing more since I fused back with Naminè. I always liked drawing, but for reason I've started liking it more. I've been taking lessons," the girl admitted, with a small touch of pride, as she passed the sketchbook to Riku. "The picture's not done yet, but I think I've been getting better."

Riku frankly hadn't much of an interest in the drawing, trying to suffocate his aggravation at having been caught. He had glanced over the picture of Sora and Kairi sitting together next to a messy scribble of what could be another person's head, and passed a brief remark about how her artwork was indeed much better than the chicken scratchings of her childhood. He had left before Kairi could retort, returning to bed in a somewhat sour mood.

From that night onward, Riku planned to work for only an hour per night, from midnight to 1am. Vowing to get a little more done per night, Riku would wander over the island for the hundredth time that night, looking for trees that would not be missed and that could be cut down easily without making too much of a noise. Felling a tree, he would saw it into smaller logs before stashing the logs in a small cave he discovered in the face of a rock wall, covering the entrance with a large boulder before running back into bed. Rope was an easier item to find; he merely had to ask his neighbors for some. He kept this in long loops under his bed.

Riku had hoped that Sora had forgotten about his suggestion to build a new raft, and indeed the brunet seemed to have wiped the incident from his memory, until one typically sunny day when he approached Riku, who was, as usual, sitting on his paopu tree.

"Riku?"

Riku didn't move a finger. "Not now. Maybe later," he replied automatically.

"Huh?"

Riku turned to the shorter boy, holding in a small sigh. "What is it, Sora?"

Riku was sure that he had never seen such a sad expression on his normally happy-go-lucky friend's face. Sora gazed unwaveringly into his friend's eyes, and asked: "Where are you going?"

Riku did a double-take. "What?"

"You're leaving. You're going someplace that I… that we can't follow you to." For the first time that Riku could think of, Sora wriggled himself onto the paopu tree, next to his best friend. The two never sat together; it was always one sitting, one standing, one looking down and one looking up at the other. "It's… it's a dark place, Riku, I can feel it."

"What are you talking about?" Riku asked scornfully, ignoring that familiar pull in his chest.

Sora put his hands down to steady himself on the tree; if the action had resulted in the brunet softly placing a warm hand over Riku's, the silver-haired boy had certainly not noticed it. "You don't hang out with us the way you used to, and even when you do, you seem distant. You go places even when other people are around, and you think that no one notices but I do. And…" Sora hesitated. "And sometimes, I try to follow you, but you go somewhere that's too far away for me to find you. Where do you go?"

Riku looked away from his friend for only a moment, a flicker of a second to break away from the overwhelming… _something_, that was shimmering in lakes and pools in his friend's forget-me-not eyes. When he returned the gaze, he was armed with a smirk and a sardonic tone in his voice. "Sounds like s_omeone's_ been watching one too many soap operas with Kairi," he teased. He hopped off the tree and stretched. "You're right. I haven't been hanging out with you guys for a while." Riku allowed his mouth to stretch into a grin. "Your fighting skills must be getting rusty without me constantly being there to beat you."

The smile that spread across Sora's face was inexplicable, a strange kind of smile that seemed to lack its normal measure of mirth and have a lot more of something else in its place. "Hey, I beat _you _the last time," he said.

Riku snorted. "In your _dreams_."

Sora hopped off the tree trunk. Just for a moment, his half-smile turned into an expression of deep concern. "Are you sure that you're alright, Riku?" he asked. "No secrets from your friends, right?"

Riku felt a swell of annoyance. He could tell Sora about the raft, his wish to adventure further, the boredom that threatened to suffocate him nearly every day that he awoke on the island, and Sora would in his typical manner try to get it, but Riku knew deep down that Sora simply _wouldn't_ understand. Sora had never craved freedom the way that Riku did; he had never chosen his adventure, merely stumbled obediently into and through it like a painted marionette in a puppet show. Riku replied with a trace of barely-hidden irritability. "Stop asking me that. I'm fine, Sora, I'm _fine_. Okay?"

Sora looked disbelieving, but nodded anyway. Riku walked to the back of his tree and collected his old wooden sword, half-hidden in the tall blades of grass that grew around the base of the tree.

No more words were needed; Sora burst into a happy grin and drew his mock-sword from the belt of his trousers, clutching the hilt firmly with both hands as he assumed his fighting stance. Riku moved to the other end of the small island, his sword held loosely in his right hand and high above his head, his left arm outstretched in a pose that he had learned somewhere on his travels.

A vocal countdown was unnecessary; both boys held their stances for a rough count of three before simultaneously leaping at each other in what to an outsider would have seemed like a perfectly executed act. Sora was the first to land a hit, ducking easily under the taller boy's arm and spinning to land his sword on Riku's back. Riku spun and returned the strike, catching Sora on his side, then his shoulder, then his chest. Sora staggered back a little with the force of the blows, then, in a move he had concocted from his swordfights with Tidus, ducked low. Although the move didn't always work with Tidus, who was only a few centimeters taller than Sora, the brunet was now able to use the large height differences between him and his friend to his advantage as Riku attempted to counterstrike and missed. In one fluid movement, Sora rolled behind Riku and whacked the flat of his sword to the back of Riku's knees, tripping him. Riku fell on his back, his sword dropping momentarily out of his hand and skittering to the ground. He scrabbled for the weapon, an action that was quickly rendered futile as Sora stepped over him, placed his foot on the sword, and straddled him, sitting on the older teen's chest. Sora kicked the sword away and brought his knees closer together, pinning Riku's arms to his sides. Riku struggled, and stared at him in disbelief. It just didn't seem possible for the match to have ended so quickly.

Evidently, Sora saw the expression on Riku's face, because the very next thing he did was lean in close so that their noses almost touched, his blue eyes full of concern again. "Hey," he said, "are you okay?"

Ten years later, Riku would look back on this event and still not quite understand why he did what he did next. All he knew was that everything suddenly became deathly silent, save for a small popping noise in his head like the cork of a champagne bottle that had been shaken too much and could no longer hold the pressure within its glass confines. He rolled violently to his right, throwing a surprised Sora off, and clambered quickly to his feet. As Sora picked himself up off the ground Riku thrust a hand out to his side, fingers outstretched. There was the distinctive sharp sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath, and as Riku re-assumed his previous fighting stance he curled his fingers around the distantly familiar hilt of his darkly-colored keyblade.

Sora's eyes widened, not having the time to speak before Riku brought the keyblade down in an arc toward Sora's head. Sora deflected it with his sword, wincing as he heard it connect with a loud crack. He leapt back, sword held diagonal and slightly in front of him, protecting his body, then leapt back again as Riku slashed the keyblade at him again in a sharp, wicked curve that barely missed his chest.

For one, awful moment, Sora had a flashback of an event years earlier, standing in front of a swirling doorway in Hollow Bastion, clashing keyblades with a friend who had given himself in to the darkness. Sora had only once seen a glazed look in Riku's naturally expressive eyes and today was the second time that he was seeing it. He hastily brought his sword up to meet with Riku's keyblade, fending off another attack to his torso. The sword was apparently not made for combat with a real weapon, as it splintered with another loud crack, the tip now clinging on by a mere few grains. Sora tossed the broken toy aside and rolled again, narrowly dodging a downward slash that clinked just behind his feet and righted himself in time to see the keyblade slicing down toward his face. Sora instinctively brought his hands up to protect himself while glancing quickly away. He felt his fingers wrap around something, then there was a loud clang as keyblade met keyblade. Riku stumbled back a little from the force of the rebound.

"Riku!" Sora yelled. "What's wrong with you?"

Riku blinked once. Looking carefully at him, Sora could see the glaze slowly leave Riku's eyes, replacing itself with something that looked like something Sora had once often seen blazing in the older boy but had gradually been forgotten over the recently mellower months.

It was anger.

Sora lowered his keyblade hesitantly. "Riku?"

That hesitation was all that Riku needed. He charged at Sora, raised his keyblade and, with both hands, swung it like a baseball bat as hard as he could, hitting the blunt side against Sora's bicep. The brunet staggered back the last few steps, before flailing his arms much in the way that Riku had a few weeks ago at the edge of the island and falling off with a loud splash into the ocean. Riku looked over to where Sora had fallen. The shockedconfusedhurt look on the shorter teen's face when his eyes met Riku's suddenly drained all inklings of rage out of him and replaced it with a sinking feeling in his stomach and chest. Disgusted with himself, and more apologetic than he could ever verbalize, Riku hurled his keyblade into the water next to Sora and stalked off back home, trying to pay no attention to the sudden heaviness he felt in his heart. He passed his mother in the kitchen and his father in the living room and ignored them both as they called to him, storming straight upstairs into his room, where he locked the door and snatched the book on knot-tying off his bookshelf.

Riku finished the raft that night. Gathering a few supplies, such as mushrooms and fish, he pushed the raft off the beach, jumped on, and watched as the island slowly receded from view.

* * *

Sora was in a state of panic when Kairi found him the next day. When she answered the door the brunet practically launched himself at her, eyes wide and pleading. "Have you seen Riku today?" he asked. 

"No… why? What's wrong?"

"I can't find him anywhere! I checked his house, I looked for him on his island, I checked _everywhere_ and I can't _find_ him!"

"Maybe he's in the secret place?" Kairi suggested.

"I checked there, too! His parents said that he had left the house by the time that they woke up. His parents wake up at 6am! There's no way that Riku would wake up earlier than them!"

Now Kairi started to look worried. "Did you check the school?"

"Kairi, I looked _everywhere_." Sora looked frantic. "I think… I think he's left the island."

"_What_?"

"I found a book on rope-tying in his room. D'you remember the book that you lent to him when we were younger? I also found large, deep tracks leading from the beach to the ocean. And…" Sora hesitated, "a few days ago, he asked me if I wanted to build a raft."

"What? But…" Kairi struggled with the new information, "why would Riku suddenly leave the island?"

"I don't know! We have to get him back!"

Kairi nodded. "What are you going to do?"

"I'll have to find him. I'll take my boat. Do you have a paddle?"

Kairi nodded again and left to fetch him one. When she returned, he was grinning sheepishly. "Thanks," he said, taking the paddle, "and, here. I almost forgot" He dropped a small, wrapped package into her hands. "My mom baked them this morning. I, um, have some for Tidus and Wakka too, but I forgot to give theirs to them earlier."

"Give them to me. I'll stay here and keep looking," Kairi said. Sora nodded and flashed her an appreciative grin, then turned and ran down to the dock, where Selphie used to sit. He quickly untied the rope holding his boat in place, steadfastly ignoring the large, ugly purple bruise that had flowered on his arm from his fight with Riku the other day, and jumped in, maneuvering the vessel out of the dock and into the ocean. Bringing the paddle to the water, he moved swiftly forward, occasionally stopping to prevent from capsizing as he wobbled dangerously from a combination of the waves and the hasty movement. The water spat at him as he clumsily beat at it with the paddle; boating had never been his strong point, and any races held in the water were normally reserved for Tidus, Wakka, Selphie and Kairi, while Sora and Riku would sit together on dry land and place bets on who would win the race.

Sora was in fact traveling so quickly that he barely noticed the tiny flash of silver, only registering it out of the corner of his eye as he zoomed past. He stabbed his paddle into the water and turned so sharply that he was very nearly toppled into the sea, and began a frantic splashing toward where Riku lay on his raft, a large, square object composed of logs alone, with no mast or sail.

"Riku!" he bellowed.

The other teenager jolted up, head turning for a brief moment as he searched for the source of the voice. "Sora?" he said; then, "_Sora_?" he repeated in alarm as the brunet splashed haphazardly at the water, yelped, then crashed headlong into Riku's raft and promptly capsized. Riku threw himself down flat and clung hastily to the edge of the raft as it rocked from the impact of the collision, then gaped in surprise at Sora as the brunet popped out of the water and grabbed onto the edge of the raft, gasping. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sora beat him to it, slapping something wet and dripping onto the back of his hand.

"Here!"

Riku sat up and eyed the bundle dubiously. Its contents felt somewhat mushy, yet there was definitely something harder inside the mushiness, and it was wrapped in what looked like someone's handkerchief. "What… is this?"

"Got space for two?" Sora asked, breathing heavily. Riku shuffled over and Sora hoisted himself onto the raft, fingers scrabbling momentarily on the rough wood bark for purchase. Riku leaned over, grabbed a hand and one of Sora's belts, and yanked Sora so hard that the brunet fell forward onto Riku's chest, knocking Riku onto his back again and sending the raft rocking. Riku thought briefly that Sora was lying on him for a little bit longer than was necessary; then, Sora rolled off and gave Riku a shove on the arm. "What _was_ that?"

"Huh?" Riku looked totally bewildered.

"You think you can leave without explaining yourself, or at least saying goodbye?" Sora exclaimed in frustration. "And what kind of raft doesn't have a sail? Those are cookies."

Riku blinked, trying to process the non sequitur. "Huh?"

Sora looked at Riku like the teenager was brain-damaged. He took the bundle from Riku's hand, flipped the hand so that it was facing palm-up, and pressed the bundle firmly back. "These are cookies," he said. "My mom made them this morning." He paused. "These are cookies. I am _giving _them to you."

"Okay," Riku said blankly.

Sora's hand twitched, as if resisting the urge to leave his side and slap his forehead. "Open it," he urged.

Obediently, Riku opened the package. Out fell a mess of soggy, bashed-up pieces of cookie and cookie crumbs, and a yellow star-shaped fruit. He stared at the paopu without any hint of recognizance.

"That's a paopu fruit," Sora said helpfully.

"Okay," Riku repeated.

Sora sighed, and deepened his voice to sound like Riku's. "If two people share one, their destinies become intertwined. They'll remain a part of each other's lives no matter what," he said. Riku wondered why that had just sounded so familiar. Sora grinned and reverted back to his own voice. "C'mon," he said, ending the quote with a slight tinge on his cheeks, "I know you want to try it."

Riku looked down at the fruit. "Well, it looks a lot better than your soggy cookies. But…" he placed it aside. "I'm not really hungry. I just finished eating a few mushrooms."

Sora groaned and flopped back onto the raft. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Riku casually toss the paopu overboard. Sora jolted up, hurt. "What'd you do that for?"

Riku smiled slightly. "We don't need a fruit to share destinies. It's like Kairi said." He tilted his head up to look at a passing cloud. "One sky, one destiny. Remember?"

Sora gaped at him in disbelief. In one, fluid moment, Sora had Riku on the flat on his back, pressed up against the raft. Sora placed his palms on either side of the surprised teenager's head, being careful not to accidentally rip out any of Riku's hair. "And you said that _I_ was slow on the uptake," he muttered, before swooping down and timidly brushing his lips against Riku's. Sora quickly rolled off, his face colored a deep red.

There was a small, short silence in which Sora fidgeted nervously with his fingers. Just as he was about to consider jumping into the water and swimming back to shore to escape the embarrassment Riku started to chuckle. "That figures as much," he said in a distant tone of voice.

It was Sora's turn to look utterly baffled. "Huh?"

"Last night when I was leaving the island… I got this far, and I was going to go further, but then suddenly I stopped, and I didn't know why."

"Why did you leave?" Sora asked quietly.

Riku looked evasive. "You wouldn't understand."

"Riku…" Sora looked pleading. "I'm your friend. No secrets from friends, remember?"

Riku sighed. He propped his head up on his forearms. "I thought that, after those years of fighting, coming home would be all I'd want." He turned his head to look Sora directly in the eyes, his gaze softened by the small smile upturning his mouth. "I was wrong, wasn't I? That never was what I wanted. Coming home was _your_ dream. And I was part of that dream. I think… I think that maybe that's the reason why I came home with you." His eyes returned to the sky. "Maybe I should've gone with King Mickey and the others."

"Riku…"

"You were probably thinking that I wanted to return to the darkness," Riku interjected, and smirked when Sora's mouth fell shut. "I'm sorry for hitting you with the keyblade yesterday. I was… angry. I thought that I was happy here, and when I realized that I wasn't, I knew that you wouldn't understand me if I told you why."

"You asked me if I wanted to build a raft," Sora said slowly.

"And you said no. You're not…" Riku hesitated then laughed quietly and threw an arm over his eyes. "You're like a chameleon."

"What?"

"Wherever you go… you fit. It doesn't matter if you're underwater, or on a snowy mountaintop, or if you're here. You fit in with your surroundings. You can live anywhere."

Sora looked hesitant. "You… can't live here?"

"It's such a small world." Riku smiled sadly. "I thought that it would be different because I'm not a kid anymore, that things would have changed. But nothing has. And sometimes… I think that I haven't changed either, because everything is the way it was before. This world wasn't made for a person like me, I don't fit into it. It's still a small world, and I'm still bored with it, and I still want to get away."

Sora was silent for a long time. He lay down next to Riku, cushioning his head with the palms of his hands. "What stopped you?"

Riku paused. "I thought about that for a while," he admitted. "I thought that maybe I was afraid of what I'd find, but I knew that wasn't it. Then I thought that I might miss something. That's what stopped me."

Sora regarded Riku with large, curious eyes. "What's the thing that you'd miss?"

Riku propped himself up on his arm and turned to meet Sora's gaze. A ghost of a smile passed over his lips, and his voice took on a teasing tone that didn't fully cover the underlying tone of shyness. "Sometimes when you talked to me, I felt like I was having a heart attack. Then I realized, last night, that it wasn't a heart attack. It was... a new emotion. The thing that I'd miss…" he looked hesitant,"I thought that it might be you."

Sora's smile was practically nuclear. He sat up and dipped his head forward, as if to kiss Riku, but pulled back, uncertain. Riku's eyes flicked to Sora's mouth and he nibbled his lip nervously for a moment before ducking his head and kissing Sora hesitantly, missing slightly and catching the brunet on the side of his mouth instead. Sora grinned and shuffled closer to Riku, raising his hands and holding either side of Riku's face as he tilted his head and leaned slowly in, pressing his lips gingerly against Riku's. His hands roved to the back of Riku's head, fingers tangling in long, soft hair as he tentatively ran his tongue across Riku's mouth. Riku's lips parted and Sora's tongue slipped in, both boys holding breaths at this thing that was so entirely new. Sora explored Riku's mouth with his usual excited curiosity upon landing on a new world; Riku moaned softly and locked his arms around Sora's waist, pulling the shorter boy closer before trailing his hands up Sora's back to his nape, where Riku toyed gently with a few of Sora's shorter spike of hair. They reluctantly broke the kiss with a sharp intake of breath, but neither seemed to want to let go of the other.

Sora curled a strand of Riku's hair onto his finger as he grinned. "That was different," he said, and looked hopefully at Riku. Riku understood what he was saying with that look. It was something new, something different, a reason for Riku to stay. When a question appeared in Sora's eyes, Riku answered it with another soft kiss to Sora's mouth. Sora snickered and nibbled playfully on Riku's lower lip.

"I always see you biting on it, and what do you know? It actually does taste good," he joked.

Riku laughed. "Come on," he said, "we'd better start heading back."

Sora's eyes widened. "Kairi still thinks that you're missing! I totally forgot." His cheeks tinged pink as he looked around. "You don't have a sail… where's your paddle?"

Riku looked amused. "It got knocked overboard when you rammed into the raft."

Sora's face fell. "Oh. Then—ack!" he squeaked as Riku jumped into the water, the sudden loss of his weight rocking the boat violently. Riku resurfaced and planted his upper body on the raft.

"Come on," he said, smiling widely, "you don't think that I'm going to move this whole raft by myself, do you?"

Sora grinned cheekily and jumped into the ocean next to Riku. He grabbed firmly onto the edge of the raft, and together they began kicking their way back to shore, using the raft as a float. Somewhere along the way Sora proposed a race and somewhere along the way Riku agreed to one, and the raft was tugged and pushed and yanked as the boys competed with one another, laughing, to see who could push their end faster; neither won and both petered out before even reaching the beach, so that they were breathing heavily when their feet touched sand. They dragged the raft up to the shore then bent over, panting.

"I haven't forgiven you yet for beating me with the keyblade," Sora said suddenly, solemnly.

Riku felt a twinge of guilt. "I said that I was sorry for that. I really am."

"Yeah?" In a move that was totally novel for a boy who had always been known to be full of innocence and light, Sora stuck his tongue out and waggled it suggestively, quirking an eyebrow. "Why don't you come to my room and… _prove_ it to me?"

Riku smirked. "I hope you soundproofed your room," he said in an exaggeratedly innocent voice, and inwardly crowed when Sora flushed a bright tomato red, mentally chalking himself a point. Riku: 1. Sora: nil.

Some things never changed, but maybe that would be alright now, because Riku had Sora and Sora was _Sora_, and Sora could always bring Riku a little bit of something new.

"Hey Sora,"Riku grinned, aquamarine eyes sparkling with challenge. "Race you to Kairi."


End file.
